Introduction

Ethnopolitical clashes have marred northern Ghana for decades (Brukum, 2000, 2001; Drucker-Brown, 1988, 1994). Bawku in the Upper East Region has been the scene of repeated confrontations – some very violent, others less so – between Mamprusis and Kusasis. The latest violence occurred in 2001 and 2002 in relation to local elections and the appointment of a local district chief executive. This chapter analyzes the longue durée of this ethnopolitical conflict and the role and idea of the state in this connection.

Ethnopolitical violence and competition, it is argued, are increasingly challenging the African state. The inability to put communal violence definitively to rest, or deal with it in appropriate institutional fora, is threatening the central state authority. Scholars of African, and indeed Ghanaian, politics often see the unruly politics based on the rhetoric of ethnicity (chiefly pedigree), firstcomers' rights, autochthony, and historical rights and injustice as testimony to the incapacity of the modern, secular, nation-state based on universal citizenship and equality (Akwetey, 1996; Skalník, 2002). Akwetey argues that the absence of adequate democratic institutions is to blame for the recurrent outbreaks of violence; there are simply no channels for expressing interests and demands.